


A Game Well Played

by faerymorstan



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: And offscreen, Angst, But you don't gotta see it, Crack, Death from Old Age, M/M, Retirementlock, So yes there is major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-17 03:48:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4651101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faerymorstan/pseuds/faerymorstan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I found <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Stitched-Worlds-hottest-Keeper-Stainless/dp/B00QQVFKSO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1440473521&sr=8-1&keywords=hottest+bee+keeper+flask&pebp=1440473520820&perid=052KF3XZD1ZZ75PB5BYF">this monstrosity</a>. Crackfic ensued.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Game Well Played

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ShinySherlock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinySherlock/gifts).



Sherlock stared down at the flask in his hands, his brow furrowed and his lips pursed, as the Met’s finest (which was, Sherlock insisted, not saying much) whistled and applauded.

“Thank you, Gilbert,” Sherlock said, after a grinning John elbowed him in the ribs while a chorus of mobile cameras chirped around them. “It’s… awful.”

“Isn’t it?” said Lestrade, his face still red and his voice still breathless from laughter. “Consider it payback, you brilliant bastard.”

“I’d say you got off easy,” John snorted, handing Sherlock a paper plate containing a plastic fork and a frankly alarming slice of cake. 

Sherlock brooded, and meticulously separated the cake from the frosting, and brooded, and ate the cake in three enormous bites, and brooded. “Do I have to keep it?” he muttered, though his mouth was still full and it came out, “Oo I a’oo eet?”

“Yes,” John said firmly, pushing a paper napkin into Sherlock’s hand. “Now wipe your mouth, unless you mean to spend your own retirement party with half the damn cake across your face.”

Sherlock stuffed the napkin into his coat pocket with as much derision as he could muster, swiped one long finger through the frosting, and slowly, pointedly, eyes-fixed-on-John-ily, very much  _not_ innocently, sucked his fingertip clean.

“Oh,” John said, shifting in his chair not nearly as discreetly as he believed he did, “you are going to  _pay_ , you brat.”

“Get a room,” Anderson yelled good-naturedly, to which every last guest in attendance answered, cheerful or tipsy or both, “Shut up, Anderson.”

*

In their cottage in Sussex, John and Sherlock fell into a pattern: Sherlock threw the flask away; John retrieved it from the trash, cleaned it til it shone, and hid it in their home; Sherlock found it, shouted “JOHN!” or, when especially aggravated, “AUGH!”, and threw it away; and the whole cycle began anew. If you were to ask either of the two men how they felt about this system, they would exclaim, loudly and by no means briefly, how infinitely infuriating the other man was, how stubborn, how hopeless, how  _unbearably_  smug. And if you were to ask them, together or alone, whether either of them would consider conceding to the other and allowing the flask to remain in the house or in the trash… well. You might not be able to pick out any of the individual words that would follow, but you would become absolutely certain that the answer was, emphatically, “ _No_.”

*

The hiding of the flask, or, as it came to be called by the two men who lived in the cottage, “The Great Game,” continued for many spirited years. For an outsider, it was difficult to discern what the rules were or, indeed, whether there  _were_  any; a seasoned visitor, however, would note that the flask was not to be disposed of into rubbish from which it would be unduly repulsive to retrieve it (“After all this time, John, you still teach me new swears,” Sherlock smiled, once John stopped swearing), nor was it to be hidden in any place from which one might, were one a consulting detective of questionable judgment, injure oneself in the finding. (“Of course this is your fault. You’re the one who put the damned thing on the roof, John,” Sherlock complained, setting his casted ankle on the coffee table with a resounding  _thump_ , and John shot back, “Yeah, genius, but  _you’re_  the one who went up there from the attic, decided it would take too long to get down that way, and _jumped off the bloody roof_.”)

Sherlock conceded, in this one (and only one!) matter, that John was right.

*

John thought, or believed, or Jesus Christ please let this part be over hoped, that he had cried the last of his grieving tears. He had rounded up the last of Sherlock’s lab equipment and donated it to Bart’s; he had let a team of sympathetic and efficient church ladies descend upon Sherlock’s wardrobe and take his clothes away in boxes for the poor; he had–not come to terms with the empty chair, exactly, but he had adopted a dog, a stout, bow-legged thing that followed John everywhere and from her first day at the cottage claimed Sherlock’s chair for her own, so that was–that was good.

But then he ran out of tea.

That was not, in and of itself, a catastrophe. He could drive to the shops. It wouldn’t take long. But there was rain pouring down, and thunder rumbling overhead, and John’s eyesight wasn’t what it used to be, and his driving in a storm would be… well. He’d better not.

Instead, he stood on his toes on the stepstool in the kitchen, one hand extended far above his head, and felt around the top shelf in hopes of one last box of tea. It’d be lapsang, probably, which was all right; Sherlock keeps it– _kept_  it out of John’s reach because “You make it wrong, John, so I have to make it for you.”

John had just about given up on finding any tea at all when his fingertips grazed something solid. He found the top of it–oh, God, it was dusty up there, best forget that and walk away–and slowly pulled it toward himself until he could wrap his hand around it and bring it down to eye level.

It was the flask.

John sat on the stepstool, blinking, and fiddled with the cap. “God, this thing really _is_ awful,” he muttered, wiping the dust from its sides. The dog waddled in and nosed at the flask, giving it one slobbery lick before deciding she didn’t like it any more than Sherlock had and lying down at John’s feet with a  _hmph_.

The cap fell open–John must’ve been fiddling with it more than he thought, damn–and a piece of rolled-up paper landed on the kitchen floor. John bent down with a grimace and picked it up before the dog could get at it. He frowned, unrolled the paper, and read:

 

> _I hate this damned thing with every fibre of my being, which is, incidentally, nearly as much as I love you._
> 
> _You win._
> 
> _With gratitude for a game well played,_
> 
> _–S.H._

John was, he discovered as the dog whined and thumped her tail against the floor and nuzzled John’s shin, not yet done with his tears. 

“Sherlock,” he sighed, smiling as he wiped his nose with the back of his hand, “you brat.”


End file.
